


Pivot Point

by Spatz



Series: SES-verse [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate POV, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, Invasion of Privacy, Team Dynamics, Whipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-23
Updated: 2020-01-23
Packaged: 2021-04-22 17:21:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22195321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spatz/pseuds/Spatz
Summary: Clint's perspective on Steve's first whipping, and the aftermath. (set in arsenicjade's The Goat's Back universe)
Series: SES-verse [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1597660
Comments: 37
Kudos: 210





	Pivot Point

**Author's Note:**

  * For [arsenicarcher (Arsenic)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arsenic/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Goat's Back](https://archiveofourown.org/works/578393) by [arsenicarcher (Arsenic)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arsenic/pseuds/arsenicarcher). 

> Dear Arsenic, I started this story a while back, and I thought I would finish it off to wish you good luck and good things in 2020. ♥
> 
> Dear everyone else, this story heavily references Arsenic's The Goat's Back and my previous story in this 'verse, Learning Curve, so read those first if you want things to make sense.

Clint can't stop staring at the Administrator's whip. 

The man had already unpacked it before the team got there, and it lies coiled on its case like a multi-headed snake. Clint feels sick with guilt – this is happening because of _his_ choice, even though the call hadn't been much of a choice with lives at stake – and even more guilty on top of that, because of the faint, cowardly relief that they wouldn't accept his offer to take the whipping for Rogers. He still has nightmares about getting caned, and that thing isn't a cane but it still looks like it would half-cripple him. A hundred strokes? Clint can't remember seeing a single punishment over fifty before, and that was for a brutal crime by the person actually getting whipped, not a simple disobeyed order by his teammate.

Even Fury practically admitted it was wrong, but Rogers hadn't even looked surprised.

The Administrator tells them someone needs to count the hits, his hand resting near the dark handle of the scourge. 

“My fuck up, my count,” Clint says, his throat tight. He doesn't want to look at Rogers, doesn't want to see the blame that must be in his eyes, but he makes himself look up. It's better than looking at the whip, better than looking at the post and trying to forget the feel of a cane on his back.

But Rogers actually _smiles_ at him, closemouthed but sincere, his shoulders dropping like he's relieved. Then he turns back to the post, strips his shirt off, and Clint sees the scars.

The team has been speculating about Rogers since they first heard about his assignment to the Avengers. Before he showed up, the leading theory was that he was just another incompetent sent by the Council to hamstring their operations: his operational record was all over the damn place, with a high changeover rate between teams and nothing but negative evals from his commanding officers.

His first mission with them put that idea to rest: Rogers had good tactical sense, adapted to the team's unorthodox skill set fast and well, did his part in the fighting, and hadn't tried to stab anyone in the back. He was quiet, efficient, and polite. He didn't even leave his dirty dishes in the common room, or drink the last of the milk, or any of the petty things that might have earned the dislike of his past units.

At that point, the question became why the hell were his records so different than his performance.

“The records could be faked,” Bruce had pointed out.

“If they are, they're the best fakes I've ever seen,” Tony had told him. “He is an SES; he's probably just erratic.”

Natasha, the only one who had really talked to Rogers before the mission, shook her head. “There's been no sign of that, and it would have shown up years ago, back before the program was shut down. A faked record is more likely. I'm having trouble getting a read on him, so I can't say if he genuinely doesn't know the Council or he's just a damn good liar.” She'd leaned forward, frowning in thought. “He's smart, perceptive, knows how to read between the lines – definitely capable of playing a long game to get our trust, until the Council can find a better opportunity to use him. The politeness is real, or at least habitual: Jarvis says he keeps the manners up even when there's no one around but Jarvis.” Natasha quirked a smile. “He even called _me_ ma'am.”

Clint had laughed then. Now, staring at the ruin of Steve's back, he wonders why no one had thought of the simplest explanation: that Steve is just as much an unwilling pawn of the Council as the rest of them.

Bruce lets out a long, vicious string of profanity that Clint hasn't heard since his last mission to Madripoor, and Clint gets why. He's seen Steve heal five-inch-long knife wounds over the course of a Quinjet flight, without a trace of a scar. Clint's no good at science, but he can do the math on how much worse the damage would have to be to leave this kind of permanent scarring.

Steve pauses, still holding his shirt bunched in his hands. “Should you really be here?” he asks Bruce. He sounds – not afraid, not worried about the Hulk, but concerned about Bruce. Natasha, standing where Steve can't see her, doesn't let her expression change, but her eyes close for just a moment too long to be a blink. Clint knows all her tells.

Bruce just says, “I’m not leaving the team.”

Steve hesitates, then nods. He folds his shirt up carefully, places it on top of the rest of his gear, and steps up to the post. He doesn't look back at them or at the Admin, just starts strapping himself in with horrifying familiarity. The Admin steps in to finish locking down the restraints, and Clint sees the moment where Steve's expression goes distant and blank, his muscles tensing as the straps clamp down on his wrists.

“One hundred, start to finish. You will be woken if you pass out,” the Admin says flatly.  
Steve doesn't respond, but his head dips and his shoulders curl in fractionally, like an aborted attempt to hunch in on himself. 

Clint wants to look away, but he can't. This is his fault. He has to keep count.

Steve is eerily silent when the whipping starts. His breath stutters over the first few strokes, then settles into a steady pattern. Between the rhythm of the strokes, the count, and the sound of Steve's even breathing, a surreal calm settles over the room, and Clint almost convinces himself that this won't be so bad.

Then (_twenty-six_), between one stroke and the next (_twenty-seven_), Steve's breath hitches, and Clint sees the long line of the whipmark well up red. 

Almost every stroke after that brings up blood, until the obscenely delicate tracery of lines spreads into a field of red that trickles down Steve's back, soaking into his waistband. Steve's silence gives way to bitten-off moans and ragged, sobbing breaths until (_sixty-six_) he screams, short and stifled, then again (_seventy_), jerking against the straps, the reinforced restraints creaking with the force of it (_seventy-nine_) before he goes suddenly, mercifully limp.

Clint closes his eyes in relief.

But it's a short-lived relief, because Clint forgot that passing out is not allowed by the fuckers who designed this horror show. The Admin pulls out a vial of ammonia salts and waves it under Steve's nose. Steve jolts awake – then moans and goes still, only his chest moving with shallow, panting breaths.

The strokes from eighty to eighty-seven stretch like a nightmare, and Steve passes out again at eighty-eight. He wakes up the second time with the exact same flinch followed by stillness and Clint wants to scream or vomit, because no one should know that sensation so well, to have it be that practiced.

Steve is too exhausted to silence himself over the last dozen strokes, crying out at each impact, back muscles spasming as he keeps trying to flinch away and is stopped by the restraints pulling tight. Clint fights to keep his voice steady, willing Steve to hold on.

When it's over, Steve slumps limply against the post and the Admin clears out faster than any of the others Clint has seen. Maybe he can sense the murderous intent in the room; Clint knows he wouldn't want Fury following at _his_ heels with that look on his face.

When the team is alone, Clint stands there for a long moment, stupidly waiting for Steve to move or speak, until Thor brushes past him. Clint hadn't heard him come back in, but Thor is already at the post with Bruce, reaching for the restraints – and Steve flinches at his touch, then moans and goes still. There's something fearful in the line of his back, the way he tries to roll his head to see who touched him, and Thor says, “Do your best to remain calm, Captain Rogers. We shall see to your wellbeing.”

“Whuh?” Steve mumbles, frowning in confusion. Tony curses, low and fluent, as Thor carefully bends Steve over his broad shoulders in a fireman's carry, hands well away from the carnage of his back. 

Clint startles when Natasha places a hand on his arm. She's holding the stack of Steve's gear, still neatly folded, and Clint looks at it instead of her.

“We should get the jet ready,” she says. It's an obvious out, but Clint takes it, because he's never been as strong as he likes to pretend.

The flight to Stark Tower is short, and silent except for Clint and Natasha's brief exchanges as they pilot. When they land, Bruce splits off for the stairs to the common level and Thor heads straight for the elevators.

“Don't take him to medical,” Natasha says sharply.

“What, why?” Tony snaps.

“He hates medical,” she says, in a tone that doesn't allow for argument.

“Where you going, big guy?” Tony asks Thor, who hasn't stopped walking.

“Captain Rogers will want the comforts of his own quarters while he recuperates,” Thor says. Clint catches a flash of guilt on Tony's face before he locks it down again. He wants to ask, but that never works with Tony. They'll see it for themselves soon enough.

The elevator whooshes downward slightly faster than normal, and Clint raises an eyebrow. Jarvis doesn't often do that unasked, and only for people he likes.

The gesture backfires, though, because almost as soon as Thor steps onto Rogers' floor, the man stirs, clutching at the back of Thor's armor. “Sick, I'm gonna—”

Thor slings Rogers around and gently lowers him to the ground bare seconds before he heaves. His arms tremble, and Clint catches Rogers by the shoulder before he collapses into the mess.

“Sorry, sorry,” he mumbles as they get him back up, and Clint bites down on his tongue. Behind them, Tony is unnaturally silent.

Pepper is waiting at the door to Rogers' apartment, looking confused. “I was downstairs, but Jarvis said— Oh my god!” She broke off, her eyes widening. Rogers has already stopped bleeding, but the blood is drying in streaks down his back and the whip marks are livid against his pale skin as Thor carries him past. Tony follows Thor in the apartment, bypassing Pepper with a laser focus that Clint has only seen on Tony in his workshop, when something important needs to be fixed. Pepper watches him pass, clearly recognizing the look because she gets a little worried crease between her eyes. “What happened, Clint? Why isn't Captain Rogers in medical?”

Awkwardly, Clint puts a comforting hand on her shoulder. For all her willingness to throw herself into Tony's messy, grease-stained life, Pepper is a real lady, like no one he's ever known. Clint's never really sure how to talk to her; he wishes he had something better to say than the ugly truth. “He wasn't injured in the fight, Pepper. I went off orders, and they whipped him.”

Pepper looks horrified, and Clint realizes with a pang that Jarvis isn't the only one who already liked Steve. “But that's not– he's bleeding like– that's not normal, is it?”

“No,” Tony says grimly, emerging from the apartment. “It really isn't.” 

The elevator dings, and Bruce emerges with the big medical kit from the common area. They started stocking it after their second big fight as a team, when Tony ducked out of the infirmary before getting stitches and then passed out from blood loss in his workshop four hours later. Bruce isn't a medical doctor, but some days he's all they can take.

Bruce heads straight into the apartment and kneels at Steve's bedside, pulling supplies out of his bag. Something in Clint eases at the sight, the knowledge that something can be done to help. He moves out of the way, towards the headboard, ready to assist if Bruce needs anything.

“Are you allergic to any painkillers?” Bruce asks, as everyone clusters around the bed.

Steve laughs a little. It's an awful sound, exhausted and hurt, and then he says, “Won't work, doc. Serum eats ‘em up. Like drinking. No use.” 

The bottom drops out of Clint's stomach. After a moment of stunned silence, the rest of the team bursts into horrified conversation.

“You're fucking kidding me—”

“What monsters would do such a—”

“Wait, does that mean he can't—”

“Jesus, Cap—” 

Clint just stares down at Steve and listens to him breathing – shallow and pained, in and out – and reminds himself it's fine, it'll be fine, Steve can heal.

Natasha's hand settles on Clint's shoulder, and her voice breaks through the hubbub. “Bruce, is there anything we can do to help him pass out?”

Bruce resettles his glasses. He's a little green around the edges but his hands are steady. “I...could disinfect his back. I'm not sure he needs it, with his healing factor, but it might help things heal more quickly, and the pain will be...enough to knock him out. I hope.”

Clint glances around. No one looks happy at the idea of causing Steve more pain – and Clint tries not to think about how high his tolerance is, how many lashes it had taken before Steve even made a noise – but no one objects. Pepper, looking pale but determined, kneels below Clint and takes Steve's hand in both of hers.

“Cap. Hey, Cap,” he says, touching his fingers to Steve's face when he doesn't respond right away. Steve twitches in surprise and his eyes flicker open. It takes him a moment too long to focus on Clint's face, frighteningly far from his usual alertness. Clint swallows hard and says, “Bruce is going to disinfect the wounds. He says it’s going to hurt like a motherfucking psychotic bitch, and to let yourself pass out, okay?”

Steve blinks tiredly at him, and for a moment, Clint isn't sure he understands. Then he mumbles, “I'll do my best.”

Clint's heart twists, and he can't do anything but stare at Steve for a long moment. He wants to tell him this isn't a test or a mission, they just want him to feel better – but it's pretty clear that it's been a long time since anyone took care of Steve. Clint remembers what that was like, remembers how confusing it was at first to be in pain and have people want to help instead of hurt.

“That's all we ask,” he says at last, and Steve closes his eyes.

Just like before, Steve barely makes any sound when Bruce starts, but Clint still has his hand on Steve's face and can feel his jaw clenching, can hear the ragged breathing and the small noises he's stifling. Finally, he lets out a gasp and goes limp.

Pepper makes a startled noise, and Clint looks down to see her freeing her hand from Steve's and shaking it out.

“You okay?” he asks.

“Yeah, of course. He just squeezed a little hard at the end there.” Pepper stands and goes over to Tony, and Clint, riding a hunch, leans over to check Steve's other hand.

The sheets underneath each finger have tiny rips in them. It's easy, sometimes, to forget just how strong Steve is under the cookie-cutter uniform and the All-American looks. Clint wants to kick himself, because Steve must have been struggling not to hurt Pepper with his grip, right up until the moment he passed out.

“How is this guy even real?” he mutters.

“Are we sure he is?” Natasha says, leaning over to look at the rips. Her voice isn't loud, but it carries in the quiet room. “At the risk of sounding paranoid, someone with this much control could still be faking. He'd have to be the best liar I've ever seen – I don't think I could pull it off under these circumstances – but we can't be certain.”

Tony looks furious, and Clint gets it, because he half feels the same way – except he can see Nat's eyes from here, the unhappiness in them, and knows she doesn't want to believe it either. But this is what she does. Natasha guards the rest of them against the worst possibilities because she's done most of them, and Clint knows that's her choice, but he hates how that leaves her watching over her shoulder and calculating angles even with people she trusts, because it's not something she can turn off.

“No, his heart is true,” Thor says unexpectedly. He has been silent since they got to Steve's room. “There was no chance to speak before, but Captain Rogers lifted Mjolnir after the battle.”

“Wait, _what_?” Tony said. “I thought only you could carry it.”

“Anyone worthy may wield the hammer, but such warriors are surpassing rare. He is honorable and loyal, we can be sure of it. The Council may wish to use him, but he will not help them willingly.” Thor drops his gaze to Steve and the mess of his back, which has only just stopped bleeding. “And I suspect that his determination may surpass their ability to persuade him.”

Clint has to smile a little at that, because really, everyone on this team is too stubborn for their own good. “So, Nat,” he says. “Is Thor's magical alien hammer vouching for Steve good enough for you?”

Her lips quirk at the absurdity of it, but she nods with more than a little relief. 

Pepper lets out a long breath and says, “I've got to get back.” She kisses Tony, and if it's a little too lingering and her hand is a little white-knuckled on his shoulder before she sweeps out, Clint isn't going to say anything.

Tony stalks out in her wake, fists clenched, and Natasha watches him go thoughtfully. Clint, recognizing that expression, says, “I'll take first watch,” and she flashes a fraction of a smile at him before following Tony, her footsteps already silent and stealthy.

Thor pats Clint's shoulder and steps away. “Be well, my friends,” he says, looking down at Steve in a way that includes him in that. “If I may be of assistance, do not hesitate to call for me.”

Bruce nods, still gently wiping down the edges of Steve's back to keep the dried blood from spreading any further. The sheets aren't too gory, thanks to Steve's healing factor stopping the bleeding fast, but he'll be more comfortable if he wakes up cleaner. “Thanks, Thor. I've got a few ideas, but I don't think I'll need help. Clint, I'll come back in a couple of hours for the next watch and bring supplies. Get Steve to drink some water if he wakes up before then, and _don't_ let him move around.” He fills a glass at the sink and finds a straw in a basket over the minifridge, then he and Thor are gone.

Clint stands for a while, just breathing. The smell of blood gets caught in his nose and he goes to the bathroom to wash. He has to stop himself from scrubbing his hands raw – he didn't even get any of Steve's blood on them.

The bathroom is barren of distractions, nothing but the most basic of toiletries, a matchbook, and some neatly folded towels, so Clint steps back into the living area. He checks the minifridge, but it's full of protein shakes and his stomach rolls at the thought of drinking one. He pokes at the old pictures on the desk – a posed group shot of soldiers somewhere in the desert, squinting into the bright sun; a slender blond woman holding a baby and grinning at the camera – and fingers the stack of books. There's a library book, _The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire_, a couple of airport-stand bestsellers, bland and torn and carelessly dogeared where Steve must have stopped reading them, and an old copy of I, Robot that looks much more carefully loved. Clint sits down in the desk chair with it and uses one of Natasha's tricks to shake it open to the most-read part – a short story titled “Robbie.” 

The sound of movement makes Clint look up. On the bed, eyes still closed, Steve is shivering, a line of distress between his eyes.

Clint jumps up and grabs the blankets from the foot of the bed, then flounders to a halt with them held in mid-air, because he can't put anything over those wounds. He settles for drawing the blankets up to Steve's hips, but there are still goosebumps prickling up all over Steve's exposed skin.

Feeling helpless and guilty, Clint says, “Jarvis, you there?” He knows the AI is available in all public areas and the team residential areas, but he's not sure if that includes Steve's room or not.

“Always, sir. How may I be of assistance?”

“Turn the heat up,” Clint says in relief. “Five degrees, maybe?”

“Immediately, sir.”

Clint can feel a wash of warm air from the vents before Jarvis even finishes speaking. 

Slowly, Steve's skin goes back to normal, but his breath is still coming too fast. He twitches, clearly caught in some nightmare; his eyelids flutter like he's on the edge of waking, and Clint can't bear to have Steve wake up again so soon, back into pain he can't escape.

Half-remembering one time he'd been sick as a kid, he awkwardly places a hand on Steve's forehead, stroking his thumb over the crease between Steve's eyes. The crease smoothes out, and Steve leans into his hand, so trusting that it hurts to watch. Tentatively, Clint runs his fingers back through Steve's regulation-short hair, which is still dusty from the battle. Steve sighs, relaxing all the way down. Clint keeps stroking until Steve has settled into the slow, rhythmic breathing of deep sleep, then steps away.

He bumps into the bedside table in his distraction, and the water glass Bruce left there slops over its rim. Grateful for something to do, Clint refills it and sets the glass back where Steve can reach. 

Blowing out a long breath that does nothing to relieve his twitchy need to _do_ something, Clint takes another look around the room. None of this makes sense. Steve didn't make sense before, and now, between the whipping and Thor's story about Mjolnir and Clint's own instincts, he makes even less. Even here, in the privacy of Steve's room, there are no answers. It could easily be a hotel room in any city: boring prints on the cream walls, Stark Industries-logoed linens, a minifridge and an awkwardly small seating area – except Steve was living here, and it wasn't supposed to be temporary. 

“Jarvis,” Clint asks quietly, “Does Steve have any stuff in storage at his old base, or being shipped here?”

“When I inquired, Captain Rogers stated that these were his only belongings.”

Clint's stomach drops. There's bland, there's career military, there's spartan, and then there's _this_. Clint isn't seeing something, something important. But there's almost nothing left to look at, though in desperation he ends up checking the closet – empty, except for a dress uniform – and the desk – empty, except for a package of fancy pencils – and the dresser drawers, which have fatigues, a handful of civvies, a spare combat suit, and Steve's cleaning kit. Steve's whole life could fit in a duffle bag, with room to spare.

For lack of anything better to do, Clint lugs the kit over the coffee table, fishes Steve's guns out of the stack of his gear that Natasha left there, and starts cleaning them. He needs something to do with his hands, and Steve's equipment is essentially the same as Natasha's, just bulkier since his body armor isn't custom-made, ultra-flexible Stark polymer weave. 

He moves a pillow to sit down, and that's where he finds the sketchbook.

Clint wonders if Steve had been called away mid-sketch, because the notebook is flipped closed over a pencil marking his place, which seems unlike him. He pulls the sketchbook closer and notices that the last page, covered in a cartoon with a large smudge in the middle, is half ripped-out. 

It only takes Clint a second to recognize the scene, and he has to stifle a laugh. On the mission before this latest disaster, Tony had flown up to Thor and made the mistake of touching him before he could ground himself. The static discharge had temporarily shorted out all of Tony's repulsors on his left side, and he'd gone cartwheeling through the air, nearly hitting a skyscraper before he could recover.

They'd spent most of the trip back giving Tony shit about it and pretending to ignore Steve's presence in the Quinjet. Steve in turn had pretended to sleep in the back and hadn't smiled once at any part of their conversation. Since the mission had gone okay again, Clint had grudgingly allowed that the Captain might just be exhausted – but thought it more likely that he just didn't have a sense of humor.

The drawing tells a pretty different story. The little cartoon shows Tony mid-cartwheel, with Thor nearby looking comically startled, his hair standing straight up like he's a Looney Tunes character who just touched a live wire. Below them, Steve has drawn Nat, Clint, and Hulk holding little scorecards for Tony – 10, 6, 9 – like they were judges at the Olympics. Clint starts to wonder why the scores are so generous except for his – but then he looks closer, and sees that Natasha's card is actually a 1.0 (she's smirking), Hulk's card is actually a 6 held upside down, and cartoon-Clint has his fingers crossed behind his back. 

It's funny and sneaky and smart, and has about fifteen times more personality than anything else in Steve's room. Clint kinda wants to pull it out and keep it for himself, but he's already snooped through all of Steve's things and is starting to feel retroactively bad about it; stealing Steve's art would be a step too far.

Although, it's already damaged. Sort of. Clint eyes the smudged spot on the page. It's large and right in the middle of the drawing, next to the row of Clint, Natasha, and Hulk. In fact.... Clint squints at the page and tilts it into the light. He can just make out the faint imprint of another figure holding a scorecard, but who else—?

Oh. Clint is an idiot. Steve had started to draw himself in with the rest of the team, and then scrubbed it out. Clint finds himself wishing he hadn't. He kinda wants to know what score Cap gave Tony's cartwheel.

Clint flips through the rest of the sketchbook, but there aren't any other cartoons: some landscapes and art stuff at the beginning, a random diagram of the Landstuhl Medical Center in Germany where Clint had been stuck with a broken leg back in 2007, and a _lot_ of sketches of the team. Steve has a good eye for detail, but all the personality in his sketches comes from the people in them – nothing like the cartoon in the back.

Clint fingers the half-torn edge of the last page, and eyes the tattered bits of paper clinging to the sketchbook's spine. On a hunch, he turns over the other pillows on the couch, then pokes between the cushions. There's a muffled crunch of paper, and he pulls a balled-up wad out from the crevice. He flattens it out and takes a look. It's another cartoon, hastily sketched and messier than the first: Clint sees five dogs on leashes, held by the Captain in full combat gear. Cartoon Cap needs the protection, too – the dogs are tangled up around his legs, snarling and tripping and chaotic.

The dogs all have the team's faces. Tony's goatee marks the muzzle of the terrier biting down on cartoon-Steve's ankle; Natasha's curls tumble behind the ears of the mutt unlatching herself from her lead. The others are less detailed but recognizable, and for a moment Clint can feel nothing but a sick rage at the sight of his own features attached to a collar, his fingers clenching around the paper.

He forces himself into calmness, smoothes out the page again – and finally spots the collar around Steve's own neck. It's an ugly, spiked affair, drawn with more detail than the others, designed to choke and control. The leash slants off the top of the page, pulled taut, and Steve has his fingers hooked between the spikes and his neck, scrabbling for air from above while the team drags him off balance below. His face has been erased roughly, any smudged traces of expression wiped out further by the crumpling of the paper, but Clint bets it wasn't pretty, caught between two sides like that.

He stares at the drawing for a bit, memorizing the details, then carefully sets the sketches to the side and picks up the cleaning supplies again. He doesn't use guns much anymore but he still remembers the routine, and his hands work steadily through the steps while his mind works on the question of Steve.

Clint wonders how many other drawings like those cartoons have been thrown away, ripped up or burned up or flushed down the toilet. But mostly, Clint can't stop thinking about that vicious collar around Steve's neck – he'd known this whipping was coming, known he was going to end up hurt, and he'd just kept steadily on, doing all the right things and making all the right calls and damn the consequences. It was the same thing the Avengers have been doing, only before now the consequences had mostly fallen on people who deserved them.

He wonders if Steve hates them. But there's all those sketches of the team, the attention to detail so keen that it's almost a confession.

All of that care, and all of it going just one way. If Steve doesn't hate them, maybe he should. 

As if his name had been called, Steve jerks on the bed. He goes very still, and his breathing changes.

Clint gives him a minute, keeping up the steady, quiet rhythm of cleaning, before he asks, “You want me to let you play possum for a bit longer, or would you prefer a drink?”

“Drink,” Steve rasps, sounding like he needed a whole tub full of fluids. He starts to push himself up and Clint protests, getting up from the coffee table and crossing the room.

“Bruce said you were supposed to stay still until he had checked you out,” Clint says, embroidering the truth a bit, “and you know how he gets when he’s pissed.”

Steve's face softens, but Clint can't tell if it's from amusement at Clint's lame joke or confusion. He puts the straw in front of Steve's face and he sucks down most of the water without even pausing for air. Benefits of being a super soldier, Clint guesses.

“Thanks,” Steve says, still unfailingly polite. He watches Clint settle on the floor by his bed, his eyes hazy and his breathing tight with pain. Pain that is Clint's fault.

“Least I can do, really,” Clint says.

Steve blinks, almost too tired to look confused. He says, “You didn’t lose count.”

Clint stiffens. There's a lot of shit Steve could legitimately ream him out for in this goatfucked situation, but that's not one of them. “I get that I’m not the smartest guy on the team, Cap, but I can manage basic tallying.” 

“What?”

“I just mean, I get that Tony and Bruce have giant super computers for brains, and Natasha knows two trillion languages, which is seriously not normal, but I’m not functionally retarded. I can make it to one hundred.”

“You’re a pilot and an archer. Of course you can count to one hundred. I meant thanks for not getting distracted, or screwing the count up on purpose.”

The world tilts around Clint, and the last puzzle piece falls into place. Clint shuts his mouth, controls the surge of hurt and grief, and echoes, “Screwing up on purpose.”

Steve's face tries to go blank in a way that Clint recognizes from pretty much every conversation Steve's had with the team, but he's too exhausted to manage it, plus Clint's got the secret decoder ring now and can finally read what's really there: he's wary. He's waiting for it to hurt. Steve says, “It's just, the team didn’t want a leader. And it has found ways to run off the others, is all.”

“And you think I would do that. Would use you having your back torn to pieces for a decision I made as a chance to have you suffer more, a way to get you out of our hair.” Clint keeps his voice casual by virtue of Natasha's training, but Steve tenses up minutely despite his best effort and closes his eyes. Clint feels sick.

“This isn’t my first rodeo. Or even my tenth, really.”

“One of these days, Cap, I’m going to learn the name of every rodeo you’ve ever seen. And then I’m riding bronc.” He keeps his voice gentle despite what he's feeling, and Steve starts to relax again.

“I don’t think that metaphor makes sense,” Steve says, his words garbled as he melts back into the pillow.

It really hadn't, so Clint forces some amusement into his voice and says, “Well, English wasn’t my best subject.”

Steve smiles. It's a really nice smile, now that Clint's paying attention. He's still smiling as he falls asleep hard, like his body flips a switch and just goes limp.

Clint drops his head into his hands and sits for a minute, pressing his palms against his eyes until they stop burning. Fuck. They really fucked this up. How can Steve still be smiling at them? All those teams, all those disciplinary marks on his record – and Clint knows what _that_ means, now – and apparently enough assholes who _screwed up the count on purpose_ that Steve started to _expect_ it, even from people he spends hours sketching with a fondness they don't fucking deserve– 

Clint surges to his feet. He paces back and forth, all the little details clicking into place: the sparseness of his belongings, the destroyed sketches (those matches in the bathroom), the way Steve leans into affection when it's offered but doesn't reach out for...anything, really.

He spots the pictures on the desk with a fresh eye: that picture of Steve's mother and baby Steve, and one of his old units. Clint seizes the second frame and scans it for details, can't even find Steve in the crowd, and pries open the back to see if there's anything written there.

A row of photobooth pictures falls out of the space between the photo and the frame. Clint flips it over, and sees a pair of dumbass kids with fresh buzzcuts and new uniforms mugging for the camera. Steve's got his arm slung comfortably around the brunet guy's shoulders, that smile bright and untarnished on his face. He's skinnier, lanky without the thick muscle he has now – this must have been from before the serum – and Clint finally matches that altered face to one in his unit photo, Steve's shoulder pressed up against that same brunet soldier. _Bucky & Steve_ reads the back of the photo strip; _Howling Commandos, Kuwait_ is on the reverse of the unit photo.__

_ _There's another strip of photos hidden behind his mother's picture: a gawky teenaged Steve with his mom, smiles bright despite the sick thinness of her face._ _

_ _“What'd you find?” Natasha asks from behind him. She'd been polite enough to let him hear the door close, so he doesn't jump._ _

_ _“He woke up earlier. _Thanked_ me for not deliberately fucking up the count when he got whipped.” Clint looks up at Natasha. “So I was looking to see who taught him that. But I don't think this is them.”_ _

_ _Natasha studies the photos and the disembowled frames, then drifts over to the coffee table to examine the sketches Clint left spread out next to the guns._ _

_ _“I've been looking through his stuff – he was expecting this to be temporary even before he knew about the Council. It's not even that he expected the worst of us, he clearly _likes_ us, he just...knew we weren't going to keep him. He didn't expect us to do right by him.” He scrubs his hands over his face._ _

_ _“Clint, this isn't your fault.” Natasha's voice interrupts his thoughts with her usual eerie precision._ _

_ _Clint looks down at the photographs. “I should have seen this, Nat. How did I not see this? Why didn't _any_ of us see this?”_ _

_ _Natasha tips her head towards the pictures on the desk. “Because it wasn't just us. He was hiding pretty hard, Clint, and it probably saved his life.”_ _

_ _“What do you mean?”_ _

_ _“When I followed Tony, he dug up the full records from the SES program. Steve's the only one left alive, and it's too thorough to be anything but deliberate.” Clint sees Natasha's jaw clench, though her face is angled away too far for him to read her expression. “Frankly, I'm surprised any of them made it out of the testing phase sane.”_ _

_ _Nat shrugs. “And...there are two reasons to do something like this.” She runs a finger down the strip of photos with Steve and his mother. “To hide it from other people – and to hide it from yourself.”_ _

_ _Clint frowns. “But he didn't, really. He still had the other pictures out.”_ _

_ _“It's a balancing act,” Natasha says absently. “You give yourself something to hang onto, but not so much that you start to hope again. I'd bet that all of the people in these photos are dead.”_ _

_ _The hairs stand up on Clint's arm. “Jesus, Nat,” he breathes. “That's a shitty way to live.”_ _

_ _“It's a good way not to die,” she says, her eyes distant. Then she blinks and looks up at Clint. “Or, it was for me.”_ _

_ _“But it's not like that anymore, for you,” Clint asks, half a question._ _

_ _“Of course not,” she says, reaching out to squeeze his hand. He pulls her into a hug, and she comes easy, even tucks her face into his shoulder, a rare tell that she needed one, too._ _

_ _“We'll fix this,” he says._ _

_ _“Yeah,” she says. “Might wanna start by putting all this stuff away.”_ _

_ _Clint resets the room with practiced skill – the frames angled just so, the books restacked, the sketches all back where they started (with some hesitation over the cartwheel sketch; he hopes Steve won't get rid of it, now, might even finish it) – and finishes cleaning the guns. Natasha is perched over on the side of the bed; he sees her reach out tentatively to touch Steve, and looks away to give her privacy._ _

_ _“Bruce is coming,” she says, pulling away and standing up. Her hearing's better than Clint's – she probably heard the elevator, or footsteps – so he watches the door, his hands moving automatically._ _

_ _Bruce backs into the room, maneuvering a bag of medical supplies and an IV pole. “Hey, Natasha,” he says, nodding at her and Clint. “Did Steve wake up at all, Clint?”_ _

_ _“Just once. He was pretty thirsty.”_ _

_ _“Yeah, I figured. I brought fluids and nutrients – if his metabolism is too fast for painkillers, he must be going through everything else faster than normal, too.” Bruce is already halfway through stringing up an IV. “You guys gonna stick around?”_ _

_ _Clint shakes his head, packing up the gun kit and tidying up the mess. “I could use a breather. Tell Jarvis if you need us?”_ _

_ _“Sure thing,” Bruce says absently, leaning down to search for a vein. Steve's in good hands._ _

_ _Clint takes one last look around Steve's room when they leave. It's the room of a man who doesn't have much of anything, but that's going to change. _ _

_ _They're going to give him a team._ _


End file.
